Your first 40 hours in Forever

Read this top to bottom. Each bit starts when that thing actually happens to you.

Before launch

Pick a class. This matters more than usual, for two reasons.

One, Forever rewrote the kits. What a class was in Classic is not what it is now. Two, there are 56 race and class combos, and six are brand new:

Human Hunter · Dwarf Shaman · Gnome Priest · Orc Mage · Troll Warlock · Undead Paladin

If you’ve played for twenty years, your instincts are wrong here. Check the full matrix before you commit.

Got beta access? Burn an hour on two or three classes. Finding out at level 40 that you hate your class really hurts.

Pick a profession. You can train at level 1. Trainers and nodes are both in the starting zone. No walking to Stormwind. See what each one makes.

Book your name. October 27 to November 3. Any upgrade purchase gets you three reservations. First come, first served.

Levels 1–6: get the free stuff

Two things changed, and both are easy to walk past.

Gathering trains where you spawn. Mining, herbalism, skinning. The nodes are right there. The old “run to the city at level 5” trip is gone.

Walking around pays XP. Take the side path out of the starting zone. You’ll hit level 6 instead of 5. That’s the difference between training your level-6 spells or not.

Train two professions now. Want gold? Take two gathering ones. Want to make your own gear? One gathering, one crafting. Herbalism feeds Alchemy and First Aid. Mining feeds Blacksmithing and Engineering.

Level 5: camping. Do not skip this.

Around level 5 you get a quest called The Great Outdoors. It sends you into town to learn Cooking and build your first campfire.

New players skip this constantly. It’s free stats.

Buffs last an hour. They stack with everything else.

Object	What you get
Camp Tent (Leatherworking)	One bar of rested XP
Sharpening Wheel (Blacksmithing)	Strength. Costs a Rough Stone and a Copper Bar
Fishbowl (Fishing)	+8% stats. Biggest number on the list

All twelve professions are in the camping guide.

Your hourly loop: find a camp → sit for one minute → grab every buff → quest for an hour → rebuild. Sixty seconds buys sixty minutes.

One catch. You can only place one camp object yourself. The rest come from other players. A camp with five objects is a camp five professions built.

Levels 15–40: dungeons are mandatory now

This is what catches Classic players out.

Blizzard moved the XP. Trash mobs in dungeons pay almost nothing. The quests inside pay a fortune. Two levels per dungeon is the reported ceiling.

Two people in the beta, same story:

• A warrior gained two levels from one Ruins of Lordaeron run
• A Horde character went 14 to 20 across Ragefire Chasm, Ruins of Lordaeron and Wailing Caverns. That was the whole route.

In Classic, speed levelers skipped dungeons. Grouping cost more than the instance gave back. That’s backwards now.

So your route looks different. Fewer zones, more instances. And you need tanks and healers, which means a dungeon you can’t fill is a route that doesn’t work. Dungeon levels and quest spots →

Level 25: Legacy opens

An account-wide progression track. Unlocks when your first character hits 25, or at 150 skill in a non-gathering profession, or by exploring the whole map.

Here’s the number that decides your build. Your account can earn 65 points. Each character can only spend 16.

One character can earn 29 on its own. So you always leave something on the table.

Pick two trees. Commit. Spreading 16 points across all three gets you nothing useful in any of them.

Two perks to plan around: Talented gives you talent points five levels early. Well Rested raises the rested cap. Both compound over the whole 1–60 run.

All 21 perks, broken down →

What 1–60 actually costs

4,084,700 XP. That’s from the client’s own level curve.

Buffs roughly halve it:

Your buffs	XP you actually earn
None	4,084,700
+100%	2,042,350

Buffs add, they don’t multiply. Two +50% buffs is +100%, not +125%.

Work your own stack out with the XP calculator.

Five things the beta keeps getting wrong

1. Not reading quest text. When a quest says the target is underground, that means find a cave. No addon tells you that.

2. Buying gear you’ll bin next level. Training costs climb fast. A green bow off the auction house is competing with your spell ranks. The bow loses. Check if a dungeon drops it first.

3. Ignoring professions. Professions gate camp objects. Camp objects gate group buffs. No profession means you bring nothing to a camp.

4. Skipping dungeons. Covered above. It’s the biggest single change to leveling.

5. Skipping First Aid. Bandages come from cloth that humanoids drop while you quest anyway. It’s the cheapest healing you’ll have, and it levels itself.

Before November 4

• Pick a class and race — all 56 combos
• Book a name, October 27 to November 3
• Choose two professions you’ll actually level
• Find the camping quest early. Level 5, “The Great Outdoors”
• Skim what Forever changes so nothing jumps out at you

Two things this page can’t tell you

A step-by-step route. Quest text lives on Blizzard’s servers, not in the client. Nobody can pull a 1–60 route out of game files. It has to come from playing. Creators are publishing it video by video.

Exactly how much a dungeon pays. “Two levels per dungeon” is field reporting. It’ll shift by level band, and Blizzard may tune it before launch.

Everything else here came out of the client for build 1.60.1.70009.